Yamaha RX-V663 + HTPC

After one year of searching I finally got my very first receiver hooked to my HTPC, it's a Yamaha RX-V663. I chose it over other similar models simply because it has a smaller foot print and (is said) generates less heat. There is quite a number of reviews on this receiver on the internet so I won't write much about it.

I use a Yamaha NS-P110 which is a 5.1 for my system. I hook the RX-V663 to my computer with a optical cable and it sounds great in a 10x20 room. But I could not get it run on a HDMI cable as it looks like having a handshake issue (Answer.Com: An exchange of signals between two devices when communications begin in order to ensure synchronization) with the on-board graphics card. In short, It sees the computer as a DVI device but not a HDMI Device. Just FYI, the manual is silent on anything related to the hooking of the receiver to computers.

Besides that, it works fine and I love it very much.

How Much RAM is Enough?

RAMs are dirt cheap nowadays, but how much is enough? I already got 2GB of DDR2-677 running on ‘dual channel’ mode on my PC, should I go for 4GB just for the sake of it? As I could not resist the low price attack I decided to go for it. Then another question arises: Would all RAMs in pairs support the so-called ‘dual channel’ mode? Could you mix the existing double sided RAMs with the newly single sided RAMs?

The answers are depending on your motherboards. Some motherboards would only support 4 single-bank (single sided chips) RAMs, if you already got 2 slots filled with 2 double sided RAMs then the remaining 2 empty slots might not be functional anymore. In this case you could only use 4 sticks of single sided RAMs if you intended to use up all the 4 slots. Now the next question is could you mix the single sided RAMs and double sided RAMs? Yes, you could but it would be on ‘single channel’ mode only, you won’t get the ‘double channel’ support.

I was quite lucky as my motherboard does support 4 sticks of double sided RAMs and it still could provide dual channel support, what I had to do was ensure that the 2 new RAMs I was going to buy were of the same brand, same capacity and double sided, that's it!

Lastly, how much RAMs would appear as the physical memory on your Windows? For 32 bits Windows, you might get roughly 3.25GB in total, including the shared memory for graphics. That means you might have 3.00GB reported by the System Information under the Windows environment. Yes, you lose roughly 800MB, but the improvement is quite significant and I personally feel that it is worth it.

Adding a Coolermaster Silent Fan to my HTPC

I have just added a Coolermaster's silent fan to my HTPC. It works great and is really silent if compared to my previous one. Coolermaster produces good silent fan at low price, this one comes with led light and transparent blades.

Windows XP SP3 solves the HDMI audio problem

The OS I used when I built my own HTPC was Windows XP, it never be a problem to me as I hooked it to my LCD TV with a D-sub cable which obviously cannot carry audio signal. I used analog audio output instead. But, when I have a HDMI cable, naturally I would expect my TV's built-in speakers would sing but unfortunately it didn't!

I know HDMI is kind of digital stuff and it provides superior sound quality directly from the source to the speakers, in this case the PC was the source, the HDMI cable as the bridge and the TV's speakers as the audio device, but they just didn't work under Windows XP (SP2, to be exact). So I started searching around and found that it might be due to the Microsoft UAA (Universal Audio Architecture) Bus driver problem, I downloaded it and installed it numerous times but it still didn't work due to some reasons beyond my knowledge.

You know what? I solved it immediately when I installed the SP3!

ATI finally supports 1360 x 768 resolution

I am back again after almost 5 months of silence! First of all I would like to tell you that I have added some stuff to my system: a 500GB hard disk, a Sony DVDRW and a HDMI cable. With the HDMI cable the text quality on my Sony LCD TV is really impressive now, it helps a lot when I view the texts. Besides, I also found that ATI finally answers to his fans and provides a driver that supports 1360 x 768 resolution! Good news to all HTPC owners who are still dealing with non-HD LCD TVs!